Well, this has been an exciting three weeks. We had to allocate most of our resources to stabilizing our service, but rest assured we did this with great pleasure. While our efforts had clear results, the development plan for the first two weeks was ruined, and the last week was spent finishing the storyline missions that are to be released with the next patch. This would have been deployed today, but we found an unexpected mission-critical bug and will release it sometime in the beginning of next week. Till then, a few teasers:

While these new missions are only available to Agents with high relations (they are level 3 assignments) and form a small proportion of all missions in game, they serve as a great platform to test our new assignment features that will find their way into the entire assignment system.

The influx of players brought light to a lot of glitches, imbalances and dysfunctional mechanisms in the game, so instead of rushing forward and pushing out new features in the next weeks, we are taking a step back and making everything that is available in the game better. All of these features are subject to change, but their purpose and outlines are quite clear. Behold, in the specific order of release:

Week of 25th of July

All our base are belong to us

Beta outposts are greatly underused at the moment. This is due to their poor risk versus reward ratio. Industrial traffic attracts a lot of hostile attention and the attackers have great advantages at the moment:

safe equipment storage

instant respawn

seeing the defenders’ available backup numbers

seeing what the defenders deploy to the island through an Arkhe scout

docking when overwhelmed

generally nothing to lose

To make these outposts and their facilities more appealing, the owners will be able to manage docking access via the relation system. The ownership will be decided in the period of two Intrusions. Losing the first Intrusion, the defenders will lose docking access management rights and the second will decide the new owner of the outpost. Later on the Intrusion timer system will also be revisited.

Welcome your new robot overlords

The Nians are becoming more clever and flexible - if you partially destroy a spawn group, it will keep coming at you. If you totally destroy a spawn group, the Nians will deploy a different kind of spawn the next time to keep you guessing. There’s also the chance that the spawn group may be an "elite" spawn - special forces carrying higher quality gear, or items that will lead to higher ranked Elite Spawns.

Week of 15th of August

Fledgeling industrialist love

There is a distinct lack of beginner production in the game. Industrialists either have to commit very serious effort, resources and EP to production, or risk failing to be competitive in any market. To mend this we are going to introduce a simple system that allows us to determine an item’s manufacturing ‘difficulty’, making it more or less sensitive to extensions and facility levels.

The idea is quite simple. CTs will not start at a default 50% material and time efficiency level, but will be predefined by their end product's complexity. Complex items will have low efficiency, leaving great room for improvement, whereas simple items - such as ammo and standard equipment - will start at high values, making them less sensitive to improving factors.

Furthermore we also plan to replace all epriton based components in T1 modules. This and the above changes will allow for a much easier and competitive entry to the industrialist career.

Industrialist brothers in arms

Currently all involved in high level production have to grind their relations up towards the relevant factions to achieve competitive results on the market. This is quite unfair, as these characters typically have little extension points invested in combat, so their combat extension spending comes at an expensive rate and they are forced into activities they may not prefer.

Henceforth, the combat mission relations will not be effecting production. Industrial mission relations will still be calculated, as the facilities currently used by the Agents are owned and loaned by the Syndicate.

From the cartographer’s wishlist

Agents will be able to set waypoints by a point & click method on the map, rename them, and organize them info folders.

Outpost ownership will be displayed on the map.

The legend area will be resizeable, making the use of the map much more comfortable.

Zombiepilot

Probably one of the most anticipated features since launch is the autopilot. Good news everyone, the time has come. You will be able to add waypoints in a certain order to create routes. When the autopilot is engaged, it will follow the route. Although plants that may grow in the path will block the robots, it’s worth noting that there are already many paths connecting the main landmarks that are cleared of these annoying vegetables. Have fun finding them and plot away!

Why is it called Zombiepilot?* Because it is really dumb and will literally do nothing more than try to lurch its way towards the next waypoint. Braaaiiinns!

* It's not, actually.

Perpetual life

Perpetuum’s persistent universe is in strong contrast with the Agents being able to reinvent themselves and appear with different names and faces. Character resetting will be removed at this point. Obviously doing it right the first time is nearly impossible. Fear not - we have a solution.

For the first 30 days you can both add and subtract extension levels in your Agent Profile. The limitation to this is that you won't be able to jump back and forth between full-fledged combat and industry specialization every minute, and that taking any extension to level 6 will freeze it perpetually. There will be an option for a one time attribute reset in this first period as well, most probably via running a trimmed version of the character creator again.

Week of 22nd of August

Farewell ‘Triangle’

All assignments will be overhauled:

The newly introduced features will make all assignments more challenging and exciting.

Transport missions will be fixed, their targets will not be another terminal, where another mission can be picked up, but rather a special building on the field. This will correct their reward per time ratio.

Mining missions will have a special target material, which is required by the Syndicate for the process of collecting energy and transferring it back to Earth, and is not used in the production chain.

Geoscanning assignments will be removed, and added as extra objectives to mining missions. These changes will ensure that these assignments do not interfere with the economy on the surface.

As you can see, we have a lot of changes on the horizon that we’re excited about, and we think you will be too. We look forward to reading your feedback on these suggestions, and working with you to create the best possible play experience. Until next time:

5 Mouse Tiger

6 DEV Zoom

7 Line

So if you occasionally killed one of mobs in spawn, the rest will chase you and only you on entire island? Also: does that mean that i can turn 1 star lights spawn into a 5 star h-mechs (or even observers1) spawn?

13 vegemite

about resets -- is that ''first 30 days'' period for newly created characters, or for everybody? I mean if my character is for example 4 months old at the time of that change, will I be able to repick another attribute, or should I do reset before it is implemented?

19 Thomas Gallant

I'm hoping that the add/remove option for extensions can be used by those with existing accounts once it becomes active, for the first 30 days after it becomes active, there are a number of starting extensions that I'd like to get rid of and convert to EP to use elsewhere.

21 Zeb Atlas

22 Mitix

23 Eta Carinea

Loving the images they look cool, the sov changes sound like a good balance i am not out there yet so will not say to much on that. The "Welcome your new robot overlords" do these type of spawns only exist on beta islands or will you have something similar on alpha with less reward obviously? industrial changes look good. I also appreciate the way you have laid your blog out even though i know the stuff is not set in stone it gives me an idea of where you are going and overall it looks good to me.

28 Etil DeLaFuente

29 DEV BoyC

Interstella: we've been working on ways to reduce the memory use of the client. The current state of these changes will go out with the next patch (which has been delayed from Friday), but hopefully we'll be able to reduce memory use even further in the coming weeks.

30 BugSplat

31 Marlona Sky

32 Kai Allard Liao

I find all of this really exciting, looks like you guys/gals will be rather busy for some time to come.

Along with Interstellas idea, is it even possible for you all to fix the routing issue? Certain areas where are clients jump to, to get from our service provider to you aren't "friendly" to gamers. Packets loses, etc etc etc. I use the Hotspot Shield, its "ok", I wouldn't call it the greatest thing since sliced bread though.

Also, if your going to do paint jobs, what about making the mechs/bots more customisable? I would think it a great way to see different styles of mechs/bots. If we are going to play in a sandbox, can we have an Erector set too? Please?

33 Dralor

How about a server wide ep reset ? This seems like the best overall way to me personaly. Reset the ep on the patch day, and give all current and new characters the 30days +/- option. Im going to assumer you can do this without deleting all equip/nic of the chars "though I dont know your coding structure to say for 100%"

34 Arga

Character resets are not a 'feature' of the EP system. The entire game mechanic evolved as a means for NEW players to fix a very harsh starting experience. The EP system isn't broken, so there's no reason to refund EP server-wide.

36 Dot Matrix

37 Fallen Kell

Wait, so now that I just reset my character to make nic via the triangle and spent my ep on that, now the triangle is going away? We should all get another free reset with these changes. I spent a significant amount of EP on this and it is not useful for ANYTHING else.

42 scorpion

I lost the "Baphomet" and 30000000 nick and my work for half a year the game - is a mockery of the players!, why not repair
I'm leaving the game, I'm not a masochist and not a millionaire!
you lose a lot of subscribers!

44 Sen Roo

45 Error

His mental state indicates that he can't be helped.
At least not without the abuse of a lot of "medicine".

About Epriton in T1 mods: I don't see the problem in T1 mods requiring Epriton. The high end commodities can be recycled from T1 mods, gained through ratting and/or artifact scanning.
At least the relatively low volume new/beginner industrialists are in need of. Removing Epriton from T1 mods (T0 i guess too) would only be a slightly nerf to ratting and artifact scanning.
If you really want to see a flourishing economy start with lowering the market taxes, increase the possible sell/buy orders (with low EPs) and remove some (not all) of the NPC sell orders for a lot of mods.
A lot of people have many T1 mods lying around without offering them on the market (it's just not worth to sell them due to market mechanics).

46 Dan

"For the first 30 days you can both add and subtract extension levels in your Agent Profile."

awesome, but i.e. what will happen if someone trains Basic Marketing up to 5, put 6 orders on a market and downgrades this extension back to 0/1? What will happen with his orders? Or what will happen to production/ct lines if someone does the same thing?